The dramatic revival of Britain's regional theatres

The story of regional theatre in recent years has been bleak, with some of Britain's oldest venues facing closure. But as Kate Kellaway discovers, a new crop of creative directors are making local heroes of themselves

This week, Stephen Daldry, interviewed on Radio 4's Front Row, was asked whether he would like to run the National theatre – to which he replied that what he actually wanted was one day to take on a regional theatre "because the relationship you have with a town can be so dynamic". To some listeners, it will have seemed an incredible answer – and 10 years ago, there is no way that he would have been thinking it. But this is an extraordinary moment for regional theatre. Everyone knows the background – how "provincial" theatre became a thing (and a word) of the past, thanks to directors such as Sam West and Michael Grandage who turned Sheffield's Crucible into a leading venue with shows that transferred to London (and could compete with anything the capital had to offer). But then, two years ago, there was a troubling setback: Derby and Exeter were threatened with closure. Sheffield went dark (for redevelopment). And, most alarmingly – and with much acrimony – Bristol Old Vic closed down, ostensibly for "refurbishment".

It is with this as a backdrop that the cause for celebration is now all the more intense – along with a sense that regional theatre is on the edge of a new era. Sheffield and Bristol are reopening with artistic directors typical of a new breed – dynamic, original, cosmopolitan – determined to reinvent regional theatre. Six months ago, super-talented actor and singer Daniel Evans took over at the Crucible. And this week, Tom Morris, described by Nicholas Hytner as "the most brilliant producer in the country", announced his first season at Bristol Old Vic. Morris has given up his job at the National (where, as an associate director, he co-directed War Horse and helped make the theatre experimental) to make the move. The feeling is that if anyone can revitalise the Bristol Old Vic, he can.

I meet Morris in the theatre's cafe and find him in enthusiastic mode – emphatically not a man who is going to sit still over a cup of tea. He suggests that we take a tour of the theatre. I follow but can hardly keep up with him, scribbling as I go. He sees possibilities, performance spaces and new talent everywhere. (Might that fly tower make a new space? How would the theatre feel with an extended stage? Might a ground-breaking French video jockey perform under his roof?) He is running on adrenaline.

But before we look ahead, I need to look back. The theatre's problems clearly went beyond its ancient electrics. I want him to explain what went wrong at Bristol Old Vic. Morris is carefully non-injurious: "It was a mutual loss of faith between the executive board, the Arts Council and other funders." Later, I speak to Dick Penny, chair of the board, who explains that the need for electrics was for real (the theatre was not safe) but that "the theatre wasn't making money and there were hiccups with audience response. Artistically, it wasn't in good shape". When it closed, it seemed "from the outside" that there was "total panic and no cogent plan – the theatre had been in steadily worsening straits for 20 years". It was reported, at the time, that its artistic director, Simon Reade, walked out without announcing the theatre's closure to staff – many of whom were made redundant.

Morris acknowledges that what he has walked in on is akin to a "grieving process. Some people are nervous about what might happen next. Yet the acceptance that something wasn't working has made people open to a new approach." Bristol's crisis is Morris's opportunity – an atmosphere in which he can work. And his track record inspires confidence: it was as artistic director of Battersea Arts Centre (1995-2003) that he not only made his mark but saved the organisation from near bankruptcy. His particular innovation was the "scratch programme" where artists could "find their own voices" and work could be tested in its early stages on audiences. Jerry Springer: The Opera began at BAC. Complicite, Frantic Assembly and Told by an Idiot all developed work there (Morris is a skilful artistic matchmaker, a talent pouncer). In Bristol, he plans a "raft of work with opportunities for local artists. Scratch work will begin in January."

His way of saying hello to the city was with a superlatively innovative week in October, dubbed the Bristol Jam, which he intends to make an annual event. "There is no festival anywhere like it in Britain," he says. It involves "improvisation in all the arts". It included an "improvised musical" and an "art school version of consequences", in which passers-by were invited to join in and splendid canvases were produced in 24 hours (they look fantastic in the upstairs foyer. I'd thought they must be by Bristol's Jackson Pollock). Morris explains: "We are not running this theatre in the way traditional theatre has been run in the past. We have to be honest about what we are doing by doing it. It's a form of improvisation." No wonder the board asked him: "How do you marry this experimental approach with the demands of the marketplace?" But his answer has the authority of experience: "You structure the developmental process according to the needs of the experiment. You don't take risks until you are confident you can."

Morris's readiness to say he is improvising requires nerve. But anyone fearing a rash adieu to tradition should not fret. He is not about to abandon Shakespeare or classical theatre. And what is especially attractive is his regard for audiences. "One of the distinguishing characteristics of my work is that you don't pretend the audience isn't there. That for me is one of the clearest features that separates theatre from film. It is one of the reasons I'm here." He believes audiences will "evolve with the work" and quotes from Henry V about audience imagination : "Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them/ Printing their proud hoofs i' th' receiving earth;/ For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings…"

But Morris will never be tamely traditional. He reveals that, in the new season, he will direct a Romeo and Juliet set in an old people's home. The idea came from Talkback Thames producer Sean O'Connor. "Romeo and Juliet are in their 80s. It is a world a bit like our own, where children are worried about the cost of care. Juliet's meddling daughter wants to marry off her mum (on Capulet ward) to a rich bachelor; Juliet prefers penniless old Romeo…"

Morris also has a refreshing attitude towards the theatre itself: "I want people to understand the space through the performances that happen in it." He loves Bristol Old Vic's 1766 wood-lined auditorium: "It's like a violin, a resonant chamber." And he hopes to invite "music-makers with a theatrical instinct" to perform in it (he has booked folk singer June Tabor to perform stories about the sea). He also plans to catch Magnetic Fields, Divine Comedy, Bellowhead. But he is determined the Old Vic should be a "Bristolian theatre" and not "London's hardest-to-get-to theatre." He wants to capitalise on the city's cultural richness: the Watershed Media Centre, the Cube, the Arnolfini, the Tobacco Factory. He introduces me to his colleague, "producer of artist development" Kate Yedigaroff, who explains that they want the Old Vic to become a "creative sanctuary" for Bristolian talent.

Already, every corner of the theatre is buzzing with creativity. Morris takes me to "the Paintshop", a performance space where Kneehigh are preparing Hansel and Gretel – the Christmas show – and to the studio next door where Firebird are rehearsing The Tempest. He introduces me to surnameless "Tid", director of the theatre's 450-strong "Young Company" who tells me (out of Morris's hearing): "The theatre changed within a week of Jam. It's become a place where curiosity, play and theatrical invention is genuine – and comes from the top."

Eventually, I sit down with Morris. Just as some babies are born looking middle-aged, Morris, 44, will always look boyish, but his energy will stop that seeming anomalous. He tells me about his failed attempts at acting. At Cambridge, while his contemporary Sam Mendes knew where he was going, Morris found the theatre scene "rather frightening". But his charming self-disparagement is not the whole picture. He may not be much of an actor – but in his new role he is an outstanding performer. I end by asking what Battersea taught him. He pauses then says: "We sometimes tried to run before we could walk." And then we look at each other as the same thought forms. For "Run before you can walk" could almost be Morris's motto: "If I rejected that, I wouldn't get anywhere."

DANIEL EVANS Artistic director, Sheffield theatres

Daniel Evans is proud to be taking on the Crucible as part of the Grandage tradition. Like his accomplished predecessor Michael Grandage, Evans is an actor (he was Peter Pan at the National and won an Olivier award for Sunday in the Park with George) and he is delighted to be following in the distinguished footsteps of Sam West. He is also bowled over by the theatre's £15.3m rebuild. He praises everything from the smallest details – its "automated flying" (as a former Peter Pan) to its more earthbound consideration for audiences – new lumbar support for every seat.

But most of all, he is grateful for the architects' fidelity to what worked best in the old building, while at the same time acknowledging that "the thrust stage and studio space have a new dynamic". The retention of the old personality even includes, he is at pains to point out, an attempt to echo the "iconic 70s carpet" – of which Sheffield audiences are, apparently, peculiarly fond.

Evans knows it is essential to open the new theatre with a bang. He has always wanted to run a building and loves the idea of the "privilege of being able to imprint a tone on a place and a season of work". His programme is a refreshing blend of the classical and the unexpected. He wants to make shows relevant to Sheffield, "to engage with the region", but is keen this should go beyond "tokenism". In the opening season, Sheffield itself will get star billing with a "radical response to Alice in Wonderland", adapted by Laura Wade, a Sheffield playwright who has always wanted to write for the Crucible. Alice will be "a disturbed girl from Sheffield who goes on a crazy redemptive journey in Wonderland".

Evans also wrote to Antony Sher to ask him to be in An Enemy of the People and was thrilled when Sher accepted. Also beckoning is Sisters, a piece of verbatim theatre by Stephanie Streetcorrect based on interviews with 40 British Muslim women after the London bombings of July 2007. She put to them "the sort of questions you might want to ask a Muslim friend". The result should make gripping theatre. Evans explains that when he arrived, there was no money set aside for new writing. He has "fought hard" for a "small commissioning pot".

His "manifesto" is that he wants "the people of Sheffield to feel the theatre is theirs. We are not creating art at them – I want them to have an emotional investment in the place". What is touching is the way he sincerely wants to reach people who have never enjoyed theatre before in their lives, believing, with a convert's passion, in what it can do. "I came from a small Welsh mining valley. I was shy and bullied… theatre changed my life."

Gemma Bodinetz runs the Playhouse ("historically considered distinguished and conservative") and the Everyman ("counter-cultural"). It is a "wonderful job" – or jobs plural. Liverpool audiences, she says approvingly, after six years at the helm, are drawn to "full-blooded drama". They favour the "four-course meal" – not mere "tapas". And she adds: "It is lucky I am so full-blown myself. I am not a pastel-shades person."

She describes her own theatrical tastes as usefully "catholic". She is strongly committed to new writing, enthusing over a "major new play by Jonathan Harvey" coming up next season. And it was under her leadership that Liverpool put on Unprotected, a ground-breaking verbatim piece about Liverpool's prostitutes – a debate about whether they should have a safe area from which to operate.

There has been judicious star casting too: Jonathan Pryce in Pinter's The Caretaker, Pete Postlethwaite as King Lear (both of which originated in Liverpool before moving to London).

She says there is a lot of red tape involved in running two theatres, but she hopes that now the two theatres influence and support each other: "I may be wrong but I think the Playhouse is re-energised by association with the Everyman. I like to think they are having a conversation." She loves it when people greet her in the foyer and say: "What have you got for us next…?" in a tone of voice that means "Bring it on…"

SIMON STOKES Artistic director, Theatre Royal, Plymouth

Simon Stokes believes change does not happen overnight. That is why he has been in Plymouth for 10 years. "You name it, we do it," he says. "Opera, ballet, drama, new writing…" He relishes the "straightforward, honest" character of his audience. "You can trust them."

He is interested in the "cultural experiment and the time it takes to lead audiences down a path of excellence". Plymouth Theatre Royal is vast (1,300 seats). There is also a large studio theatre – the Drum – and a third space called TR2, built five years ago, "a huge production and creative learning centre". They can rival the Royal Opera House for scale – with the result that Cameron Mackintosh often develops work in Plymouth.

Stokes once worked at the Bush theatre in London and is passionate about new writing: "I put on work that I think is good – after all, I am not unique in this world."

He regularly breaks with traditional expectation, most recently staging a grand guignol play by Carl Grose who has worked with Kneehigh. Audiences might not always find a show to their liking but he is concerned that they should at least be clear as to why he put it on. His worry, when contemplating the future of regional theatre is that the recession will prove "destructive" of the "quality" that matters to him so much.

JONATHAN CHURCH Artistic director, Chichester festival theatre

Jonathan Church, artistic director of Chichester festival theatre. PR

Jonathan Church feels regional theatre could almost be his subject on Mastermind. "I've worked in Birmingham, Nottingham, Derby, Sheffield, Salisbury, Leeds…" He sees Chichester, where he has been artistic director for four years, as a special case because it was "built without public subsidy" in the 1960s and was the vision of one man – Leslie Evershed-Martin.

Church believes its beginnings (even though it is subsidised nowadays) define how Chichester theatre-goers feel. There is a "sense of ownership" that is "pretty unique". The scale is uncommon too. "Compare it to Birmingham which has a population of two million and a theatre with 800 seats. Chichester's population is a mere 25,000 but its theatre has 1,400 seats." And it is distinctive in being open only from April to September – a gloriously extended, theatrical summer holiday.

Church believes that regional theatre has changed out of all recognition over the last 10 years, with dusty rep a thing of the past. And Chichester is constantly evolving, as the exemplary Minerva studio (where Lucy Prebble's play Enron had its debut) proves. But the national picture has, Church argues, been complicated by lavish lottery funding. Expansion can distort regional character: "Some theatres have grown from corner shops to huge civic supermarkets and lost their identity."

He suggests our emphasis is misplaced: "Theatre is never about buildings, it is always about the work – you forget that at your peril." He has built his success (audience figures have soared during his directorship) on encouraging terrific, varied work from Rupert Goold's Macbeth to the hit musical Calendar Girls. Musicals are a "revealing tool" because, if you judge it right, you catch more than one audience. "Calendar Girls sold out before we had even opened."

But how does he make such calculations? He adopts Sir Laurence Olivier's maxim, he replies, who used always to claim: "I do three shows for the audience – and one for me."